


Echoes of Elsewhere

by FlockOfPigeons



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Blaseball is a horror game, elsewhere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:55:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29992824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlockOfPigeons/pseuds/FlockOfPigeons
Summary: Three players taken by the Immateria. Elsewhere is worse than they had ever imagined.
Kudos: 9
Collections: Canada Moist Talkers Fanfiction





	Echoes of Elsewhere

The Immateria surges, pulling at their feet, and they hiss in frustration. Not  _ now.  _ Not when they’re  _ so close _ . They throw down a bat that will find its way back into their hands by its own means, and let it take them. It’ll be over as quickly as it started.

Except it’s not. This time it’s different. The Immateria fills their lungs, and as they claw frantically at it, searching for the surface, panic bubbles in their chest. They can’t find one. It’s only when they open their mouth to scream that they realize that they can breathe.

They look down. Their feet stand on scuffed, slightly moisture-damaged carpet. Posters clutter the walls, the Talkers’ logo competing with Garages album covers. They are home, but so far from it. This home is no more, the space the same, but the walls empty. They couldn’t bear the memories. Their heart hammers in their chest, and they feel a buzzing in their pocket. They pull a phone out of their pocket, at once unfamiliar and all  _ too  _ familiar. They replaced it, had to after they threw it into the floodwaters. After  _ that  _ game, the game where Tyler-

Tyler. Their name is emblazoned across the screen, the contact image a tiny window into a past that Ziwa has been trying to forget for more than ten years. They almost don’t answer. But they can’t help themselves.

“Tyler?” They whisper.

“Tyler?” A voice asks, and the phone flies from their hands, clattering against home plate. They’re in the Arena. “Tyler’s gone, Ziwa.” The voice sounds from above them, and they crane their head back, cold horror running down their spine as their gaze meets red umpire eyes.

“Why didn’t you stop me, Ziwa?” It asks in Hobbs’ voice. “Why didn’t you say no? You knew I had the book. You knew it wouldn’t end well. It couldn’t.”

“And yet,” chimes in another voice, and they whip around to face the pitcher’s mound. “They brought me back.” Jaylen’s eyes are hollow blue as they bounce a flame-wreathed ball in their palm. “Inaction is just as bad as action. You should know that by now. How many died, Ziwa?” The scenery shifts, and Ziwa feels like they’re going to vomit as their vision warps and shifts. The flaming Blaseball singes their palm, but they can’t drop it, can’t stop the motion as they wind up, pitch. They watch its arc through the air, helpless. 

“You think you’re  _ helpless _ ?” Jaylen’s voice sounds in their mind as the ball strikes Scorpler’s chest. Their form begins to flicker, and the other players on the field turn, stare at Jaylen, at Ziwa, eyes wide with horror. 

“You were never helpless, Mueller.” They all speak as one. “You never were.”

Jaylen’s voice once again: “ _ I  _ was.”

And then Ziwa is aflame. Their hands - Bates’ hands - turn to ash. They are Bates, they are Kiki, they are Wallace. Then they are running, they are weeping, Workman’s legs carrying them around the bases as they burn.

The Immateria surges. They are told that they’ve been gone for ten days. They are asked if they’re okay. They say that they are. They lie.

And York is gone.

\---

The waves lap soundlessly at the beach, and the silence rings in his ears. 

“Lady Friday?” He pleads for what feels like the hundredth time, his words ringing out sharp in the stillness. “Lady Friday!” The sand shifts under his feet, pulls itself up into a pillar. A woman with the face of a clock.

“York.” Her voice is familiar. “Where have you been, York?”

“It’s not my fault!” His voice cracks. “I didn’t mean to go!”

“I know.” Her face cannot smile, but he can hear it in her voice. It calms him, and the tension he didn’t realize he was holding dissipates.

“Have they been good to you?”

He smiles weakly, nods. “Yeah, Lady Friday, They have.”

“Good.” She leans forward, casting him in a startlingly cold shadow. “And have you been good to them, York?”

“Wh-What do you mean?” He finds himself shivering.

“Tell me the truth, York. Have you been good?”

“Yes, I mean I think I-”

“LIES.” She lurches back, face tilted to the sun. She stands, still, for a small eternity, then slowly lowers her head.

The clock face, once frozen, now runs backwards.

“No!” York howls, voice cracking again as it shifts upward in pitch. “No Lady Friday, please-” His clothes feel loose, too loose, and the sand shifts once again, swirling around his feet in whorls. He fights it, but it clings to him like concrete. He starts to cry out again, but it fills his mouth, his throat, and his vision goes dark.

He is falling. He finds he can move, pound his fists against a material that he recognizes immediately. He finds, too, that he can scream, but it bounces against the inside of the shell.

No one hears. No one can.

When he returns, sees daylight again, the others ask what it was like. He doesn’t answer.

\---

Commissioner Vapor is surrounded by screens. A banner is plastered across each, more than he can count.

[STREAM STARTING SOON! Stay tuned, Vaporheads!]

Vapor knows he’s not human, and the sensation of cold is unfamiliar. He’s never felt it before, and it bites at his not-quite-flesh. He pulls his knees closer to his chest, buries his head as if that could stop him from seeing the looming feeds. As if it could stop him from seeing as each one blinks to life. 

The screens flash, memory upon memory layering in a cacophony of sound. Each screen, some version of himself moving, gesturing, laughing. Cacophony, that is, until they all go silent, and he realizes that each iteration of himself is waiting for a response that doesn’t come. He looks to faces that aren’t there, empty rooms echoing back his words in hollow repetition. “Where are they?” He asks, frantic. “Where are they?” A howl.

[Who?] The chat scrolls upward across all those screens in a deluge of [Who?], [Who?], [Who?]

[Who are you without them?]

[Who were you before them?]

[Who are you now?]

[Nothing]

[Nothing]

[Nothing]

Each screen blinks into blackness, one by one, until only one remains, stretched wide against the dark expanse. Static hisses, flashes across its surface.

[You are nothing]

It winks out, one final shutting of an eye.

And leaves him, nothing amidst infinite nothing.


End file.
